Wednesday, June 16, 2010

In this work, which offers both an accessible primer for students and challenging new theses for scholars, Lukacs addresses the perplexing and often overlooked questions about World War II, revealing the ways in which the war and its legacy still touch lives today.

Moore interweaves stories of the compelling people and events that characterized the 1920s to produce a gripping portrait of the Jazz Age. She reveals that the Roaring Twenties were an epoch of passion and change--an age, she observes, not unlike our own.

Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained. As citizens of a neutral nation, the Americans in Paris believed they had little to fear. They were wrong.

Here is the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John Gilbert Winant. Drawing from a variety of primary sources, Olson skillfully depicts the dramatic personal journeys of these men who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and a reluctant American public to support the British at a critical time.

6The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: how the daughters of Genghis Khan rescued his empireby Jack Weatherford.After Genghis Khan's death in 1227, conflicts erupted between his daughters and his daughters-in-law; what began as a war between powerful women soon became a war against women in power as brother turned against sister, son against mother. At the end of this epic struggle, the dynasty of the Mongol queens had seemingly been extinguished forever, as even their names were erased from the historical record.